New research highlights the significant role grief and loss plays in the lives of many First Coast girls incarcerated in the state's juvenile justice system.

The report from the Jacksonville-based Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center, which will be presented at its annual See the Girl Summit on Thursday and Friday, identified 11 common experiences incarcerated girls had gone through, including homelessness, foster-care placement, pregnancy, loss of family members, running away, suspension and substance abuse.

The girls, on average, endured six of those experiences.

At the epicenter of issues for many girls are grief and loss. Often times, the grief went untreated.

The impact of loss then can show up in a variety of ways, including running away, acting out, becoming withdrawn and becoming substance abusers.

In turn, the way institutions - including schools, child protection agencies and the juvenile justice system - respond to the girls' grief can further their feelings of disconnection from their community.

"We have to learn from the failures because when a girl is spending a critical, developmental part of her life in residential placement, we need to learn how we how we failed her and what it is that we can do differently," Policy Center President and CEO Lawanda Ravoira said. "But it has to be grounded in her experiences, and not what we believe her experiences are."

* * *

Duval County is a state leader in sending girls to residential commitment programs with 37 girls sent to programs in 2013-14, according to Department of Juvenile Justice data.

In a sample of 32 girls from Duval, Nassau, Clay and St. Johns counties who were held in secure residential facilities in 2014, researchers found 41 percent lost a close family member in the last year and 53 percent lost other relatives or friends in the last year.

In turn, the way the system responds can often make a girl feel more disconnected. Suspension disconnects a girl from school. Foster-care placement disconnects her more from her family. A residential placement further disconnects her from her community.

"You start to see the effect of a community disconnecting from a girl in crisis, and so what that looks like in behavior can be very different for each individual girl," Ravoira said.

While everyone experiences grief and loss, Ravoira said the difference is that safety nets are available to some people but inaccessible for others.

"When I experience grief and loss, I have all these protective factors and safety nets that help me get on the other side of it, but our girls, they don't," Ravoira said. "Then we see this spiraling effect of running away, out-of-home placements, substance abuse. Rather than focusing on that core, the impact of grief and loss, our response becomes school suspension. It becomes arrest, incarceration, violations of probation."

Much of the national research focuses on sexual abuse and exploitation as major reasons why girls are incarcerated. A report released in July by the Human Rights Project for Girls, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Ms. Foundation for Women, found sexual abuse is a primary factor for girls' going into the juvenile justice system.

Ravoira said she sees the Policy Center's findings as parallel to this existing research. She wonders if the sexual abuse overshadows underlying grief and loss in some cases.

"When you work with a girl who has experienced these abuses, trauma and exploitations, it can feel like the most urgent need," she said. "They've had so many assaults, whether that is a physical assault or a sexual assault or a loss of a home or suspended from school . . . you try to meet her where she's at and address what's most urgent."

* * *

Jacksonville-native Rachel Atkinson remembers her not-so-sweet 16th birthday clearly; it's hard to forget a birthday spent in juvenile detention. "You don't get a special phone call or anything," said Atkinson, now 17, said. "You just wake up and it's like any other day. That's hard. That's difficult.

"'Why am I here? It's my birthday.'"

Atkinson is one of the dozens of First Coast girls sent to juvenile residential facilities each year.

Atkinson remembers several incidents from her childhood that were tough. When she was 5, her best friend's older brother, who was also her sister's boyfriend, killed himself. Shortly thereafter, her friend moved away and she never heard from her again.

The kids in her youth group at church made fun of her weight. She struggled with self confidence.

When she was 12, she met a slightly older boy who introduced her to drinking, smoking marijuana and shoplifting. She lost weight at an unhealthy rate, primarily by not eating. She began to dye her hair and wear heavy eyeliner.

That's when Atkinson said her parents noticed she was changing.

She started stealing nail polish at 14. She was arrested for the first time at 15. In the next four months, she was arrested twice for shoplifting food. Stints in drug rehabilitation programs never worked - she felt the counselors were unkind or other girls bullied her. She ran away from the facilities, and kept running.

She was placed on probation, but after cutting off her ankle monitor, her chances ran out. She was sent to detention for two months followed by a 10-month residential program in Tampa.

Atkinson said the detention center staff treated her harshly and guards ridiculed her with comments like 'See you next time!' as she left the facility.

"They have this attitude that this isn't a day care, that this isn't set up for you to want to come back," she said. "But they say a lot of things that can be really hurtful."

* * *

Ravoira said Jacksonville lacks mental health services, leaving the Department of Juvenile Justice to act as the area's de facto mental health system. The lack of resources also spills into the adult realm, too, with the Duval County Jail acting as the largest supplier of mental health services in the Northeast Florida area, the Times-Union reported in August.

"I'm not advocating for a free pass. I am the first to say that girls have to be held accountable for their behavior. Because you are suffering from grief and trauma, it doesn't give you a free pass to shoplift," Ravoira said. "But our response as a community, if we're only focusing on the behavior - the shoplifting, in this moment in time, and not all that has happened to her - then we are never going to see a change, and we are not going to be able to provide enough services or build enough prison beds to address the root cause."

For many girls, that root cause is the grief, loss and trauma they experience earlier in life.

Jacqueline Brown, a Policy Center psychologist, said it is hard to find therapists trained to address these issues with girls. The training is available free online, but Brown said hosting a training session can get the information to more local therapists; she recalled a training session the Policy Center hosted two years ago that filled up within 24 hours.

More than 80 percent of girls in the study rated their mental health services in residential facilities as being helpful. Of those same girls, less than 50 percent said the mental health services in the community helped them.

"Part of why the girls are receiving better care in their facilities than in the communities is their perception, is their therapists there are there with them, physically, and it's very easy for them to attend," Brown said. "There's few barriers… I think we need to make it easier for our families and our girls to receive the services they need."

Brown also emphasized supportive families help girls be more successful. Sometimes that means the mother needs her own therapist, substance abuse treatment or help with communication skills, she said.

"If a client is ready to work in therapy, and the families are supportive, then (therapy) is incredibly effective," Brown said.

Before a girl receives the services she needs, she must be identified as needing help. For Ravoira, one entity that can help identify girls in crisis is the school system.

Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said the district must make sure staff can identify the warning signs of a troubled girl. When red flags are raised, the school can refer her to an outside provider, but in Ribault and Raines high schools, a new model allows the services to be provided at school, he said.

The district also is re-examining how it approaches discipline and moving toward strategies that include identifying the cause of a bad behavior, Vitti said.

In the study, girls said teachers and coaches have the potential to make some or a lot of difference in their lives.

Rob Mason, director of the Jacksonville area's public defender's juvenile division, said the juvenile justice system doesn't always address young women's needs. "I'm not sure the juvenile justice system is as cognizant as to the trauma that some of these children suffer," he said.

The First Coast needs more resources to enable girls to succeed and get out of the system when placed on probation. The Policy Center's research found that 50 percent of the girls studied were sent to their residential facilities due to a technical violation of probation, such as running away, skipping school or breaking curfew. It's a finding that Ravoira called "unacceptable" and Mason described was overly punitive.

"We need community resources that are more effective," Mason said. "I don't like seeing somebody sent off, and they're being sent off because they're not doing something they were told to do. Just the substance abuse - so many children have substance abuse and a part of the normal rehabilitation and treatment for substance abuse is you can expect there to be relapses. But our system says if you relapse, you've violated probation and you may be sent off. "

Gwen Steverson, operations and program manager with the Department of Juvenile Justice, said it's a team effort to help a child return to their community. A girl's juvenile probation officer, along with her program staff, parents and the girl herself, meet monthly where the girl receives an individualized plan.

For their part, the girls want probation officers who are more consistent, and they want to see them more often; residential program staff should be more supportive and provide more therapy and coping skills training; for other people who work with girls, listen, and do so without judgment.

The Policy Center report highlights include the increased availability of safe houses for girls, interventions that involve families and more training for people who work with girls. The report argues a community-based service network is more cost-effective than detention, but says little of where the up-front money for that will come from.

Relief from the state seems unlikely. The Sunshine State is last place for mental-health spending.

Gov. Rick Scott proposed a $19 million increase in mental health and substance abuse spending next year. Even if the Legislature approves the spending, it still won't be enough.

Miami Judge Steve Leifman, a leading mental-health advocate, said even if the Legislature invested $1 billion more into mental-health services, it would only bring Florida to 32nd in the nation for per-capita spending on mental-health services. Even then, he wouldn't want the $1 billion to go to the current system, which he said needs comprehensive reform.

* * *

For Atkinson, her supportive therapist and her supportive family made it easier for her to go home to Jacksonville. She said she learned coping and communication skills through therapy at her program, and her counselor at the Policy Center still supports her. Until Atkinson found a therapist she really liked and connected with in her residential program, she didn't believe she could have a future, finish school, go to college, have a career and start a family. The counselor was the first person Atkinson felt an honest connection to in years.

"She was genuine and she actually really wanted to help me, to a point where even if it hurt my feelings a little bit, she told me how it was," Atkinson said. "I loved it."

Girls she met in her program didn't have the same safety net to return home to, she said. Some didn't even know where they would go when released. "If I didn't have my support, eventually I'd become an adult and I'd be going to big people jail," she said, "and that's scary."

Atkinson finished her residential placement in April, and has been out of the juvenile justice system since July.

Finally, she said, she feels independent. The girl who once dreamed of stealing a tent from Walmart and backpacking around the world because she didn't see the need to finish school now plans to go to college. She hasn't lost the desire to travel, though now she hopes her career will take her around the world. At first, she considering nursing, but now she leans toward social work. Before she retires, she wants to document the names of 1 million people she's helped.

"I think the detention center has helped me a lot when it comes to seeing how other people's lives are," Atkinson said. "I think seeing all of that has helped me realize there's a lot of hurting people out there who hurt more than I do. I was just a brat running away from home, but there are people out there with real, real, real issues.

"And I can help that."

Tessa Duvall: (904) 359-4697

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Advertising

Stay Connected

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Florida Times-Union ~ 1 Riverside Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32202 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service